Did a relatively small number of people from Siberia who trekked across a Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago give rise to the native peoples of North and South America?

Or did the ancestors of today’s native peoples come from other parts of Asia or Polynesia, arriving multiple times at several places on the two continents, by sea as well as by land, in successive migrations that began as early as 30,000 years ago?

The questions – featured on magazine covers and TV specials – have agitated anthropologists, archaeologists and others for decades.

University of Michigan scientists, working with an international team of geneticists and anthropologists, have produced new genetic evidence that’s likely to hearten proponents of the land bridge theory. The study, published online in PLoS Genetics, is one of the most comprehensive analyses so far among efforts to use genetic data to shed light on the topic.

Don't know if the native peoples will accept this explanation. They claim they have been watchmen here in Americas' since time immemorial. But it's hard to deny DNA evidence, as the courts have shown. Hey we as western civilization can barely keep or history accurate overthew last 10,000 years or even the last 200, so I guess we can forgive them if they believe their creation stories and that they have always been here.

Wonder how this affects their theories on Clovis man and the migration from Europe. perhaps they were wiped out by the newcomers and that is why we have 12,000 year old samples of their bones, or it was the onset of the Iceage that killed their food, like they suspect and killed them.

Politically Correct archaeologists are focusing on the Clovis Point which was developed somewhere between 16,000 - 14,000 years BP. They are completely ignoring the far older remains in the lower level of the cave, as the older material might poke a hole in some important archaeologist’s pet theory. The excavation focuses on the floor of a cave that has seen continuous human habitation for 40,000 years or more. The uppermost layer is littered with ‘modern’ Clovis Points. The next lower layer has an ‘older’ style that is technically the ‘father’ of the Clovis design. This pattern is repeated in several more layers, showing an unbroken chain of technological development from the oldest Flaked Stone Ax on the lower layer, to the ‘modern’ Clovis Point in the upper layer.

How old is the oldest layer ??? European Neanderthal ‘Cave Men’ were using the same design of flaked stone ax 67,000 years BP. Carbon dating will not reach that far into the past. The scientists must find a sufficient quantity of bone (animal or human) that can be subjected to amino-acid-racimization. Another branch of archaeology studies the rock of the cave, and the assumed weather patterns, to determine how rapidly the roof flakes off onto the floor each year. Then they perform a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess), and publish the results.

Adjacent to this site, and as far away as 5,000 miles, Woolly Mammoth skeletons have been found with Clovis points wedged firmly between the bones. These people were hunting mammoths with ‘high tech’ spears, when the Neanderthals were still driving animals over cliffs and clubbing them to death. The ‘Mousterian’ tool kits have been found from Clovis, NM, north through the coastal plains, across Alaska, and into Siberia. From there, these people spread out throughout Asia, and eventually, into Europe. There is no evidence that they ‘hunted’ the Neanderthal or engaged them in warfare, it is more likely that they simply out-competed them for the available resources. So far, the European archaeologists have found crude (two and three flaked) Neanderthal stone axes and the highly refined Mousterian stone tools, but nothing even hinting at the development from the older form to the newer more refined tools

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Who can you believe? I'll go with the latter choice for now.

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Such studies present a real problem for Mitt Romney and the Mormon faithful who believe that the Native American represent lost tribe(s) of Israel that came by boat. Then again, this group believes the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. Science based on religious texts has a nasty way of not representing reality.

_________________“I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat.”-Will Rogers